Brooklyn Friends School

Brooklyn Friends is a Preschool through 12th grade independent Quaker school located in the thriving Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood. Guided by the Quaker belief that there is a Divine Light in everyone, Brooklyn Friends School cultivates an intellectually ambitious and diverse community that celebrates each individual’s gifts. We challenge our students to value and embrace difference as they develop critical thinking skills and apply their knowledge and intelligence both in and out of the classroom. In this rich learning environment, we inspire all members of our community to voice their convictions, to discover and pursue their passions, and to seek truth. Our graduates are compassionate, curious, and confident global citizens who let their lives speak in the spirit of leadership and service.

Brooklyn Friends is an independent, college preparatory Quaker school where the majority of the faculty holds advanced degrees, and the Upper School offers the academically challenging and highly esteemed International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. Our school is proud of its active, supportive parent body, our enthusiastic teachers and dedicated staff, and our thoughtful and articulate students. Together, we form a community reflective of a unique combination of intellect, energy, and heart. Our Core Values:

• Those who aspire to integrity, embrace challenges, and internalize the goal of being the best they can be, enable the full development of their minds, character, and spirit. They build a strong foundation not only for success in school, but for a rich and rewarding life as well.
• A community bound and dedicated to the School’s mission provides an environment of mutual care and teaches its members how to work together in the common pursuit of learning.
• A multicultural school community creates an enriched learning environment through the exploration, understanding, and appreciation of differences. It prepares students for living in an increasingly diverse and global society.
• The dignity of all and a sense of inclusion are fostered by active listening to and active engagement with others. Respect is most powerful when it characterizes the relationships and interactions between and among all segments of the school community: parents, students, teachers, staff, and alumni/ae.
• Developing the practice of serving others benefits oneself, the school community, and the world beyond. Graduates with a lifetime commitment to making the world a better place fulfill a major aspect of the school’s mission.
• Quaker Meeting and other dedicated periods of silence provide precious opportunities to be in more direct contact with the light within and among each of us. These are times to reflect on one’s values and aspirations, community concerns, and matters of deeper import that often are submerged in the noise of everyday life.

The practices, values, and collective consciousness of the Religious Society of Friends will always remain central to BFS. Our recently completed membership renewal accreditation process with the Friends Council on Education confirmed the ongoing strength of our Quaker identity. Current students, as well as many alumni, frequently reiterate the powerful meaning that they derived from our weekly meetings for worship. The learning community’s continuous and intentional search for paths to simplicity, peace, integrity, community, social justice, equality, and stewardship creates a framework for many of the most important student-faculty learning experiences at BFS.

The life of the mind thrives in every part of our school. Our teachers are passionate life-long learners as well as skilled communicators of their own mastery of fact, theory and method. We create the opportunities, symbolized by our upper school International Baccalaureate program, for students to explore with depth, breadth and engagement the areas of their own intellectual interest while also meeting high standards in their required humanities, mathematics, and sciences coursework.

Experiential immersion in the arts provides uniquely stimulating opportunities for students across the age spectrum to connect with the life of the heart and spirit as well as the mind. For a significant number of BFS alumni, the artistic work that they began at Brooklyn Friends provided a foundation for careers of great accomplishment and social significance. Such a legacy informs our deep commitment to keep the arts lively and growing at BFS.

BFS students, faculty and staff confront, learn from, and celebrate individual differences as they embrace the challenge of creating a unified community in which all members can thrive. In our admissions, financial aid, and faculty recruitment work, we seek to reflect the diversity of the New York neighborhoods that is the wellspring of our school’s energy and continuous renewal. Approximately 40% of our students and faculty are persons of color, and they join students from a panoply of cultural and class backgrounds who all love learning at BFS and wait in anticipation for its doors to open each day. Such love fuels the highest aspirations of any educational institution.

Upper School
Address: 116 Lawrence Street, Brooklyn
Postal Code: 11201